Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

blog.interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 496 posts

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#21

Post by fleitz »

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

As one of those kids to never went to school, I'm going to agree with you. Most people can't program, however, better schools are only slightly better in outputting people who can.

I find fizzbuzz and other coding challenges much more effective in hiring.

It's hard to do but showing actual code from your codebase with an actual real bug is a much better indicator of whether someone will be successful than anything else.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#22

Post by Avshalom »

chk_ur_autism wrote: post #12
w1ntermute wrote: post #5

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

I'm not sure I understand your argument here. If we cut through the clutter, you're essentially advocating that you hire people on an individual basis and shouldn't weight at all what school they come from. No?

No, they are advocating hiring from the big 5 and then saying that it's just a coincidence that all the employees they've hired on 'on [their] own merit' are from there.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#23

Post by jmcgough »

rhizome wrote: post #19
leeny wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds. With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

Do I understand correctly that on the candidate side the person can go through a sequence of interviews without the possibility of actually meeting a hiring company? Also that you only work with students?

The people using Interviewing.io are typically using it as a means of practicing interviews in a low-pressure setting. Their goal isn't to get offers from companies, but if it leads to that, I'm sure they don't mind.

Also, they don't just work with students. I've used them, and I've worked professionally for several years.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#24

Post by azinman2 »

lambda_lover wrote: post #15

Agreed. As someone who recently graduated from a relatively good (2100 median SAT score) school that ISN'T a top five CS school, it was absolutely insulting how often I was completely ignored by companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I understand that the median of talent is probably worse at my school than at, say, MIT or Stanford, but the top quarter of my CS year was full of brilliant people who had an unnec…

My experience is that there’s almost always some top tier talent no matter what school you’re in. Particularly when young, the school one goes to is often more a choice of circumstance and randomness than of deliberate thought and Oracle-like forsight on the school’s behalf.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#25

Post by wlesieutre »

chk_ur_autism wrote: post #12
w1ntermute wrote: post #5

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

I'm not sure I understand your argument here. If we cut through the clutter, you're essentially advocating that you hire people on an individual basis and shouldn't weight at all what school they come from. No?

The argument is that if you're hiring a student from Stanford you can assume some baseline level of competence (only approximately true, I'd bet). If you're hiring from elsewhere, maybe you have to interview 10 people to find someone with similar knowledge/skill/misc. It's a bigger time investment in the hiring search, and gauging technical skill in a job interview is still an unsolved problem.

If you find an efficient + effective way to compare all the applicants, that would make it easier to put everyone on the same footing regardless of school. But that's hard to do and it's easy to be risk averse and just hire the Harvard grad.

A Harvard grad presumably costs you more, but they keep doing it that way because 1) it's simple, and 2) if you try to hire more broadly but misjudge and make a bad hire, that's potentially much more expensive.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#26

Post by lambda_lover »

naturalgradient wrote: post #10

I was an undergraduate at a no-name university for various personal reasons. A Google, Microsoft and other big tech co offices were nearby. Throughout my undergrad, not a single event, talk or recruiting opportunity emerged. I understand this: the top people are the same everywhere but it does not economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people. I am now at a world famous grad school and there are…

It really isn't that expensive to send a couple of engineers to a school if you're hoping to hire a couple of talented students, and maybe some interns. You really only need one event a year.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#27

Post by alexandercrohde »

naturalgradient wrote: post #10

I was an undergraduate at a no-name university for various personal reasons. A Google, Microsoft and other big tech co offices were nearby. Throughout my undergrad, not a single event, talk or recruiting opportunity emerged. I understand this: the top people are the same everywhere but it does not economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people. I am now at a world famous grad school and there are…

Maybe companies could leverage this "internet" thing to reach the great students systematically? Maybe put these lectures online?

Continue with projects like codejam, though ideally come up with one that is less reliant on obscure math (or OEIS) and more reliant on problem solving.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#28

Post by thearn4 »

I've worked on a few teams at my job that only seemed to hire from GA Tech, MIT or Purdue (engineering), though I was the odd one out in coming from a non-engineering background (math) from a state school. Intellectual inbreeding is a big problem in some areas. New ideas tend to emerge when folks with separate (or even seemingly disparate) perspectives find ways to address a common problem. This can describe multidisciplinary teams, but also teams with folks who learned the same subject in different ways.

That said, I do agree that I've always been impressed with prospective hires & the students we've mentored from top-tier schools. But I also know that a great student could come from anywhere, and if they also happen to be local it can be a real value multiplier.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#29

Post by pfschell »

This article treats "CS graduates" as interchangeable cogs, where the only variables are race, parents' income, and where they grew up. The reality is that particular tech companies have very specific needs around the kind of training someone has. CS curricula vary widely in terms of technologies and depths covered, and applicability to real world problems.

A company like Apple has litte use for someone who has only ever worked on IT-focused Java development. A company seeking the latest AI talent will never find it at a school that trains students on the latest web middleware. And once companies realize they're getting a lot of well-prepared candidates from a particular program, of course they're going to focus on those schools. It would be a waste of time and scarce resources to do otherwise.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#30

Post by RodericDay »

pfschell wrote: post #29

This article treats "CS graduates" as interchangeable cogs, where the only variables are race, parents' income, and where they grew up. The reality is that particular tech companies have very specific needs around the kind of training someone has. CS curricula vary widely in terms of technologies and depths covered, and applicability to real world problems. A company like Apple has litte use for someone who has only…

> Apple

> scarce resources

haha

Post reply on HN